Kate Bush News

Some events just end up feeling quite historic, and this was one of them. Cloudbusting created a spectacular show in London on Saturday night. The entirety of The Kick Inside was performed in album sequence to mark the exact 40th anniversary date of the record’s release (February 17th 1978). A sold-out crowd of 1,000 fans thronged into the Islington Assembly Hall and were wowed by a richly conceived, musically accomplished and tastefully staged show which cleverly but subtly echoed the structure of Kate’s Before the Dawn concerts.

The first act featured superb versions of songs like Love and Anger, Breathing, Night of the Swallow and Running up that Hill. It built up to a thunderous King of the Mountain before the stage was cleared and a projected filmed interview of Del Palmer, with photos of Kate from her early career, ushered in “side one” of The Kick Inside.

Mandy Watson on stage in Islington – photo by Paul Thomas

Throughout, singer Mandy Watson brought a searing authenticity to her vocals, never attempting to parody Kate’s voice. The result is a performance from her that is consistently sensational. Mandy always addresses the audience as herself, a singer, never pretending to be Kate, just a genuine fan of this music wanting to do it justice. She deserves special praise for taking on the sheer array of Kate’s most elaborate songs which the band had woven into this show, and making it seem effortless. Mandy was joined by backing vocalists Julia Krajewska (also on secondary keyboards), and Nadie Keating – their spot-on delivery enhanced and complemented each song terrifically well.

Moving had background projections of Lindsay Kemp in performance while The Saxophone Song featured sublime saxophone accompaniment from Vicky Cowles. After a suitably dramatic Strange Phenomena, Kite featured surprise guest drummer Preston Heyman who of course had played on the Tour of Life, and on the albums Never For Ever and The Dreaming. The crowd warmly cheered Preston’s arrival on stage. The Man with the Child in his Eyes added the Brilliant Strings quartet to the stage and also a very moving dance performance by none other than Kate’s longtime dancer and choreographer Stewart Avon Arnold, performing with his dance partner, Tori Wood-Ives. Stewart took his bow to an audience clearly thrilled to see him dance to Kate Bush music once more. Wuthering Heights closed out “side one”, ending with a sea of waving arms throughout the crowd. There were even bigger surprises to come for “side two”.

Stewart Avon Arnold and dance partner Tori Wood-Ives – photo by Paul Thomas

After the break, back projections from spaghetti westerns announced the arrival of James and the Cold Gun which was followed by a stirring Feel It. Oh to Be in Love reminded you how rare it is to hear these songs performed in a live setting, especially as this was the lone track from Kate’s debut record not to make her 1979 shows. The opening lines of L’Amour Looks Something Like You played out:

“…you came out of the night, wearing a mask in white colour…”

Sure enough, a mysterious black costumed figure in dark wig and white mask had arrived at the front of the stage and, after theatrically bowing and throwing an arc of glitter, proceeded to play bass guitar with the band on the song. Mandy then unmasked the stranger to reveal DEL PALMER himself! This sent the venue into ecstatic uproar – Del has famously not performed any incarnation of Kate’s music in a live setting for decades now, but he has made an exception after being wowed by the enthusiasm and hard work of the Cloudbusting team.

A masked Del Palmer plays bass in Islington Assembly Hall – photo by Stacey Howard

Del also played on Them Heavy People, joined once again by Preston Heyman – a Tour of Life reunion! Legendary drummer Stuart Elliott was in the audience and received a huge round of applause when Del pointed out the only person in the room who had actually played on The Kick Inside! With Room for the Life and the string-accompanied take on The Kick Inside, the band completed their superb tribute to Kate’s first record.

Del Palmer and Preston Heyman on stage in Islington – photo by Paul Thomas

And incredibly, the music just continued with Wow, the song summing up most attendee’s feelings on what they’d just witnessed. Sat in Your Lap featured Preston Heyman’s stunning drums from the original track –  it was a real highlight of the evening to watch him play. A powerhouse version of Aerial, the ever-thrilling Hounds of Love and Babooshka, and a gorgeous Moments of Pleasure lead up to a joyous finale with Cloudbusting. Mandy thanked the audience for trusting the band with the music they cherish so much.

Outside in the foyer, fans were encouraged to write messages to Kate on a huge canvas print of The Kick Inside artwork and hundreds of notes to Kate were added to it over the course of the evening. Well done to Mandy, to Michael Mayell (keyboards and general Kate Bush mastermind!), Dave Roberts on bass, Chris Voysey on guitars, Adam Aggiss on drums with visuals and production design by Nick Gregory. Outstanding all.

Seán Twomey from katebushnews.com at the signed canvas of The Kick Inside artwork

Update: Due to the overwhelming success of the show, a repeat performance will be held on March 21st in Wolverhampton. See the Facebook event page here. The band will again be joined by two backing vocalists, string quartet and a saxophonist with hopefully some of the other very special guests that joined them in attendance.

“…and then I find it out, when I take a good look up. There’s a hole in the sky, with a big eyeball, calling me….come up and be a kite, and fly a diamond night…”

The Kick Inside, Kate’s stunning debut album, was released on February 17th 1978 – exactly 40 years ago today! Kate was just 19 years old and her single Wuthering Heights was already on its way to becoming a global hit. Two of the songs had been executively produced by David Gilmour at AIR Studios London in 1975 (Saxophone Song and The Man with the Child in His Eyes) but the bulk of the recordings took place in July/August 1977 at the same studios, produced by Andrew Powell. The album went on to reach number 3 in the UK album chart and went Top Ten in many countries around the world.

On a personal level (and this is Seán here), this was the first ever Kate Bush record I truly connected with. At a particularly traumatic and low time in my teen years I found myself in my bedroom, distraught and feeling utterly empty and useless. I was lost. I was in a very bad way. And yet, instinctively, I firstly feared that my family downstairs would hear my loud, sobbing, grief. It’s terrible to think that it was my own loving family, the ones who would have comforted me through anything, who were the ones I felt I needed to hide this aberrant disruption from. To muffle the sounds of my crying, I threw the needle on the record of whatever vinyl album my older brother, Allen (with whom I shared a bedroom) happened to be listening to. It was The Kick Inside as it turns out. The track I popped the needle down on was “Them Heavy People”. I played it loud.

I’m so glad to say that it managed to pierce the fog of my lonely despair…instantly. Kate’s voice seemed to reach out of the record player and take me gently by the hand into a new, utterly different circumstance. A new way of appreciating life. “Them heavy people hit me in a soft spot…them heavy people, help me…” For a bullied teenager reaching the absolute limit of his perseverance, it was an extraordinary revelation. Music literally changed the course of my entire life then. It changed my outlook, it changed everything…and as luck would have it, Kate Bush’s music was the thing that saved me. From my point of view, The Kick Inside isn’t just a debut artist’s lucky one-off that lead to greater things down the line. It is in itself an astounding, life changing masterpiece. The wisdom contained on the grooves of that vinyl is immense.

International cover variants of The Kick Inside

But apart from my own attachments to the album, today I wanted to publish an article on that very special album cover art, that beautiful thing we all held and relished in our hands back then, in particular. In the UK and many other territories the album’s cover artwork features a photograph of Kate, clinging to a large painted dragon kite, gliding across a vast, all-seeing eye. I am very grateful to the lovely Lisa Oliver for sharing the following with us, an account of that iconic session, written by the photographer, Jay Myrdal. This piece was originally included in a souvenir booklet for a Kate Bush fan event that Lisa organised in recent years. Jay writes:

Jay Myrdal

It must be remembered that when I shot the photographs of Kate for her first album, ‘The Kick Inside’, no one had heard of her before. She was very young and even EMI didn’t expect her first album to be anything more than a minor success. While the record company were confident that she was indeed a considerable talent, they were as surprised as anyone when she topped the charts. I had listened to the tape of Wuthering Heights before the shoot and my recollection was that, while it was interesting, I thought she had a rather shrill voice and I did not expect it to do very well.

What do I know?

Kate arrived at the studio with her father and a car full of bits of wood and painted paper from which he constructed the kite as it appears in the photograph. I rigged the rather fragile kite on the black painted wall of my studio with ropes and a metal bar which was strong enough for her to hang from.

An outtake showing the metal bar and ropes that were constructed for the shot.

In the meantime Kate was in the back room with a makeup girl being covered in gold body paint. The image was entirely Kate’s idea and Steve Ridgeway, the art director and I simply did more or less as we were told. The idea had come from the Disney animated film ‘Pinocchio’ and the scene when Jiminy Cricket floats past the whale’s eye using his umbrella like a parachute.

Still from Walt Disney’s “Pinocchio” (1940)

The shoot went well of course but I had never been fully briefed on just how it would be used. I had been instructed to shoot it on black which was how it appeared on the single. Used that way, it worked just fine. Unfortunately, when it was composited against the light yellow background of the eye, the dark shadows around her legs and on the bottom of the kite didn’t work for me. In spite of it being probably the most famous record cover I ever shot, I never used it in my portfolio, feeling that this technical problem was an embarrassment to a perfectionist like myself.

Again… What do I know?

Kate returned to my studio a few times after the shoot, once to collect the kite and a few more times just to say hello. Shortly after her record was released I held one of my well known studio parties and invited Kate but sadly by that time she was far too famous and busy to attend although she did send her apologies via the record company… (sigh!)  – Jay Myrdal FRPS 

The kite theme was continued on the back cover with an illustration of a man on a kite by Del Palmer set against a dusky, grainy sky photographed by John Carder Bush. This illustration would ultimately feature the first appearance of the KT symbol hidden on Kate’s album artwork – a tradition she has continued on every album release to this day. If you look closely you’ll also see that Del included a pictogram of his name, “DEL”, on the kite’s right wing! Del recently posted some of his early concept sketches for this to his official Facebook page dating from September 1977:

Del Palmer’s original concept sketches for his flying man kite illustration

A detail from the back cover of The Kick Inside (1978)

A variant of the kite image of Kate from this shoot was used on the Wuthering Heights single cover in the UK and in most European countries – released on January 20th 1978 – with the song “Kite” itself being the single’s b-side around the world.

And finally, a reproduction of the famous paper kite was used as the backdrop for Kate’s lip-synched performance of Wuthering Heights in the summer of 1978 at Festivalbar at Arena di Verona, a Roman amphitheater in Verona, Italy. We particularly enjoy those stern costumed characters guarding the kite while Kate sings!

Australian digital radio station, Double J, has today broadcast a 2-hour 40 Year special on Kate! Read much more on their site and listen to the programme stream, hosted by Gemma Pike, at their site here. A rare Australian TV interview clip from 1980 is also included on their Facebook page:

In the lengthy accompanying article, we get a mention: “The katebushnews.com forum is one of the nicest places you could ever visit, despite being on the internet and popular, with 441,000 posts. Although it’s hard to tell, members appear to be mostly English, middle-aged, and deeply in love with Kate.”

They write:

“If you’re not at least fascinated by the career of Kate Bush, then you must be pretty hard to please.

This singular artist has released ten albums across a hugely sporadic career that has served as a real ‘feast or famine’ situation for her adoring fans.

Among those records are some of the most cherished, boundary-pushing, polarising and fascinating pop songs of all time. Many have tried, but no one has ever managed to release something both as strange and beautiful as ‘Wuthering Heights’, or as passionate, relatable and literate as ‘Running Up That Hill’. And that’s not even scratching the surface.

Match that with just a handful of live performances over the past four decades and there’s plenty to talk about when it comes to this esteemed artist.

Join Gemma Pike for the Kate Bush J Files, 40 years on from the release of her debut album, Thursday 15 February from 8pm AEDT.”

Irish TV viewers were treated to comedian and actress Deirdre O’Kane dancing to Kate’s Wuthering Heights on RTE’s Dancing with the Stars on Sunday Night, and received glowing praise from the show’s judges. Clip is available on RTE Player here: (possibly only in Ireland, sorry!)

Swedish fans may like to note that the Gothenburg Symphony and guest artists Jennie Abrahamson (toured the World with Peter Gabriel) and Malin Dahlström (Niki & The Dove) will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of Kate’s career. It is described as “a towering tribute with hit songs and pure poetry in special arrangements by Martin Schaub.”

The two concerts take place on Friday March 23rd and Saturday March 24th at Gothenburg Concert Hall. Tickets and info can be found here.

Jennie Abrahamson

February 1st sees the publication of a brand new magazine special all about Kate from the makers of Classic Pop Magazine. It will be available to order online and will also be on sale in newsagents in the UK and Ireland – and yes Seán from this site has been interviewed for this special and also wrote a short piece for it.

If you order online there is also an option to buy a fan pack with 4 art cards included.

Here is the link to pre-order the individual issue for £7.99: http://bit.ly/2n2HacY
Here is the link to pre-order the issue PLUS art cards for £15: http://bit.ly/2DxKvfl

Classic Pop tells us: “The 4 art cards are printed on thick glossy card and feature some stunning photos from a performance in the Netherlands, a photo shot in Italy, her performance on the Saturday Night Live Show in 1978 and of course a gorgeous close up”

From the Press Release:

In this special edition 132-page magazine, we celebrate 40 years of Kate Bush, who’s unique brand of songwriting and performing has bewitched the globe since her debut single, ‘Wuthering Heights’ made UK No. 1 in 1978.

Inside, we explore Bush’s career, from her wide-eyed beginnings touted as a child genius, through to the critical and commercial success of her incredible canon of work, and on to 2014’s triumphant return to the stage for her 22-night residency in London’s Hammersmith Apollo.

We get the inside track via interviews with KT Bush Band member Brian Bath and session musician David Paton, official photographer Guido Harari, KateBushnews.com founder Seán Twomey, plus there’s a 1978 archive interview with Kate herself.

Elsewhere, we take a detailed look at Bush’s musical collaborations, we pass judgement on the finest of her output in our Top 40, and we offer in-depth classic album profiles from across her career including ‘The Kick Inside’, ‘Never For Ever’, ‘Hounds Of Love’, ‘The Red Shoes’ and ‘Aerial’.

Lastly, Seán Twomey offers up a fascinating look at the storytelling within Kate’s songs, there’s features on ‘The Tour Of Life’ and the ‘Before the Dawn’ shows, and we handpick our selection of vinyl treasures to be found within Kate’s stunning catalogue.

We hope you enjoy the issue!

From Retracing the Scenes: Wuthering Heights and The Kick Inside : 1977 to 1978 Homeground Anthology Volume I – available on Amazon here

“… As far as we know, Kate Bush’s most famous song was written sometime in March 1977, late at night, with a full moon shining in at the window. It was the final exorcism of a presence that had haunted her since she had caught the scene with Cathy at the window in the 1967 black and white BBC adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel. Though not originally conceived as her début single, to Kate, as the recording session wound on in August 1977, it became both musically and vocally the obvious track to break through the hard shell of public indifference. EMI were not at first convinced. To them, James and the Cold Gun looked much more like the obvious lead − pause now and consider what might have happened if they had had their way. Would it have been so big? Would that have been better in the long-run for Kate’s career development? Would Kate have been perceived by the general public and the rock establishment and press in a totally different light?

EMI finally relented and allowed Kate her own choice, and a release date was set for November 4th 1977. The “demo” copies were pressed up and many were sent out. One of these landed on the desk used by Eddie Puma, then the producer of ‘The Late Show’ for the London commercial radio station Capital Radio. He was entranced on his first hearing and left the disc for the presenter of the show Tony Myatt. They were both convinced that it was a superb single of rare quality and began playing it right away. The other DJs on the station were not so certain.

Meanwhile back at EMI’s Manchester Square headquarters a dispute had broken out over the artwork of the sleeve. The company had conceived an integrated publicity campaign centred around a Gered Mankowitz photo of Kate in a pink dance leotard − which apart from being the centrepiece of the posters would also form the covers of both single and album. Kate wasn’t so sure she wanted a campaign built more around her body than her music, and began to argue for an album cover design featuring a concept of the song Kite which her boyfriend Del Palmer had originally put together. Though it was late in the day, EMI again relented and allowed Kate to have her way.

The release date of the single was put back, and put back again. Afraid that premature exposure of the song would ruin the publicity build-up, EMI wrote to the radio stations that had received their demo copies to ask them to hold airplay for the time being. Most agreed, but Tony Myatt and Eddie Puma did not, and on Capital Radio Wuthering Heights was played throughout November and December. In the north of England, Manchester’s Piccadilly Radio also kept it on the playlist, and BBC Radio 1 was finally obliged by public request to break its silence.

By the time the new artwork was ready, Christmas was upon the popular music world, and it was decided that it would not be a good idea to throw Kate into the Yuletide maelstrom. A new release date was therefore set for 20th January 1978.

Read More

We’ll link here to pages on the internet celebrating the release by EMI of Kate’s debut single Wuthering Heights on 20th January 1978:

Daily Telegraph

Gaffa.dk | The Post | Far Out | Super DeLuxe Edition | Forty Year Itch |

StevePafford

BBC Channel 4 Facebook

The Guardian